Activists are critical players in the reproductive justice movement. The titles and roles of activists may differ, but a good activist can be spotted by their passion and dedication to their work. This blog series highlights some of our movement’s key changemakers, fighting for reproductive liberation in their work and in their lives. The series seeks to build on our past Act and Learn Webinars, featuring activists who have joined us as panelists.

This installment is an interview with Maddy Niziolek, Organizing and Engagement Specialist at Catholics for Choice and co-founder of the emergency contraception distribution organization, EC4DC. They were a panelist on our “Fertility Treatments vs. Junk Science” Act and Learn Webinar. Responses were provided during a one-on-one call, and this transcription was reviewed and approved by the interviewee prior to publication.

1. Can you describe yourself and your role(s)?

I am the Organizing and Engagement Specialist in our Campus and Workshops department at Catholics for Choice (CFC). That’s just a fancy way of saying I do our student and youth organizing work—so that looks like working with young folks who are part of our Young Catholic Repro Collective, or students who are on Catholic campuses and working to organize for reproductive freedom.

2. What led you to your role that you’re doing now at CFC?

I was raised Catholic in a progressive Catholic community. They talked a lot about social justice values and as a young person immediately thought, oh, this obviously this applies to reproductive justice and queer liberation. It all felt very connected: values about loving your neighbor, caring for the most marginalized, and promoting active peace. Then I learned that was not true—those values didn’t necessarily extend to justice movements in the Catholic community. I had also grown up knowing that I was the proud result of IVF and my parents had made that decision despite church teaching. So, I always had an example of what it looks like to faithfully disagree with the church on the issues of sexual and reproductive health. When I was around high school, my school had poor sex education, and I got involved in a teaching peer sex education. I fell in love with organizing with young folks. When I came to undergrad at GW, I immediately got involved with our student reproductive justice organization and got more involved in organizing. I learned just how important it is for young people on these campuses to hold institutions accountable and fight for access for their peers. When I had the opportunity to join CFC, I thought it was such a connection between my background being raised Catholic and my experience doing student organizing work, and it felt like a match made in heaven.

3. How has your background in student organizing informed your work?

I would not be the organizer I am if I did not do the student organizing work I did. I feel like I learned so much as a student organizer. I mostly work now with students who are on Catholic campuses and the environment is a little bit different than GW, which is a secular school; but I feel like so many of the lessons that I learned are applicable and the fights are very similar. I think being grounded in working with other young people to advance what we knew we needed and what our peers needed has also informed my perspective of youth being able to lead this work. This is work that we do with young people, not just for young people—I think is something that I always carry into the work that I do now because of the student organizing that I did. I also think there are so many little lessons that you learn when student organizing and having those experiences with administrations on campuses that I think are really valuable. I feel like having that experience on the student side has led me to be able to impart young people with the knowledge and skills I wish I had had when I started.

4. Can you talk about the work you’ve been doing at a campus level and with young people?

We know that the access landscape looks difficult for students who are on Catholic campuses. Last year, we did a study of student health center provision of contraception and found that 66% of the Catholic health centers that we contacted did not provide contraception in their student health centers at all, and then an additional 17% don’t provide contraception for the purposes of preventing pregnancy. We also have a lot of student organizations who cannot become fully registered student organizations, so they can’t receive funding and they can’t get access to space on campus. But there also are so many students who are demanding more and are fighting against a narrow view of what it means to be a Catholic institution—that a Catholic institution is defined by restricting access to student reproductive healthcare. There’s a lot of work within folks who are working towards some form of contraceptive access, whether they’re doing peer-to-peer distribution of contraceptives, fighting for access in their health centers, or students who are just fighting to become registered student organizations. We work to support the students and to connect them with each other. We provide tactical assistance as much as we can to make it the most and supportive environment for those organizing all these campuses, whether that’s raising awareness about access gaps on their campuses, encouraging cross-campus coalitions, or organizing faculty, and then also providing them education and resources to support them.

5. What is CFC doing to track and respond to anti-abortion efforts to restrict access to IVF?

For us at CFC, the anti-IVF perspective is something that we’ve been experiencing for a long time. The Catholic Church is kind of exceptional in the prohibitions of some forms of sexual and reproductive healthcare, whether it’s a prohibition on artificial contraception—which can be defined as the intentional use of devices or medications (IUDs, pills, etc.) to prevent pregnancy—or being opposed to IVF. So, we know people are weaponizing the Catholic faith to oppose reproductive healthcare despite the vast majority of Catholics not supporting those efforts to do so. We work with pro-choice Catholics and our co-conspirators in a number of our priority states who are working at the state level to fight this kind of legislation, whether it’s around access to fertility medicine, abortion, or contraceptive access. We recently launched our action council of advocates and policy leaders at the state level. We also know that some of the efforts restricting access to IVF are reliant upon Catholic healthcare, like Catholic hospitals and anti-abortion pregnancy centers that prohibit fertility treatments or other care through ethical and religious directives. So, we’re also closely tracking it from that angle as well—watching the expansion of Catholic healthcare and also the Catholic influence in anti-abortion pregnancy centers.

6. How are you equipping young people with the tools to combat anti-abortion myths and misinformation?

There is so much misinformation on Catholic campuses about abortion and reproductive health, so we work with a lot of young people who have been fed dangerous messages or about what other Catholics believe about these topics. I think something that’s unique about our work in the movement is that so many of our staff members or young people we work with have the same histories: being forced to go to March for Life because they got bussed out as a middle school student, or having to volunteer at an anti-abortion pregnancy center. We work with people who come from this background to unlearn a lot of the misinformation that they’ve been fed. We help people talk to the Catholic people in their life about abortion and reproductive healthcare. Equipping young people with the ability to have these conversations and being able to challenge misinformation when they see it is really important. We also equip young people to be the person on their campus who can help dispel other misinformation that’s happening on campus. There’s active forces that are spreading misinformation about abortion on campus—whether it’s Students for Life or a Turning Point chapter. Even if they can’t be an official registered student organization, having a presence on campus that supports reproductive freedom and has accurate information about it is really important. For example, we have a zine about contraception on campus; a lot of those physical resources for students have also been able to combat some of the misinformation they’re seeing on campus.

7. How can community aid networks work in tandem or parallel to the work of nonprofits in the fight for reproductive justice?

I think there’s so much that community aid networks have done that have made the reproductive justice movement so much stronger. As an abortion doula, I think being in the clinic with folks and being grounded in that experience is something that continually grounds my abortion activism in the daily lived experience of people. In movement spaces, it’s easy to get caught up in the policy work and what we need to do about it. I think having that time where I’m in the clinic with people and just seeing so many different ways that abortion looks to folks really grounds my work. It’s just as important to ensure that we’re actually engaged in the communities that we’re fighting for so that we’re not just fighting for them, but also fighting with them. I also think there’s so much mutual aid work, whether it’s our students who are doing this on Catholic campuses, or also ourselves as a part of EC4DC, that are providing reproductive healthcare that folks often can’t access within the formal medical system. That’s sort of welcoming people into the movement. When I’m tabling at a farmer’s market with emergency contraception and somebody comes up and is like, what’s this? And they say, I’ve never thought about being able to access this in a space like this or outside a doctor’s office. I think that does a lot of really important political work to encourage folks to questions why they are being forced to pay for emergency contraception in other settings—and that there are people in community who care and that this doesn’t have to be stigmatized. I think one of the lessons post-Dobbs that the movement has been learning is just the importance of being deeply rooted in our communities and fighting at the local level, because that’s where we have relationships with folks.

8. How do you stay grounded as an activist and juggle multiple goals in the movement at once?

I think one of the most important things that I have learned from being a doula is that sometimes it’s just not about you. I think it’s important to look beyond the work that you’re doing, or thinking of it as the most important thing the movement is doing and understand that the movement is made up of so many people that can work to address multiple issues. I can be over here working on contraception access on campus and my friend at Reproaction can be working on self-managed abortion work. And when I think that work would be really helpful for the students I am working with, I can loop in the people I know doing that work. I think disconnecting yourself also allows you to create sustainable organizations and roles, including creating ways for young people to lead. There are times you have to step back and let other people do the work so that you’re supporting the movement at large. And that’s so beautiful to learn too – that it doesn’t all rest on your shoulders. None of us are going to win abortion access individually. That’s not how change works. In those moments where I feel like I’m the only one who can do something or I feel like there’s too much on my plate, it’s a moment for me to check in with myself and note that this is a sign that maybe there’s other people that we need to bring into to this.

9. Is there anything that you haven’t shared already that you feel is important for people to know?

Get involved! If you’re a pro-choice Catholic or co-conspirator and want to get tapped in, we’re really open to figuring out what that looks like and have a variety of different options for folks to get involved depending on what their skills and experiences are. We’re really led by students and their incredible organizing – but also, campuses don’t exist in a vacuum. Alumni have power, community members have power, faculty have power, so we’re also always looking for folks who are in any way related to a Catholic college or university because it’s important that we’re creating really broad and powerful coalitions.

10. How can people support your work?

This summer, we have our Youth Organizing Academy, which is a really great opportunity for young people, especially if you’re a former student organizer looking to see what organizing for reproductive freedom looks like after graduation. Otherwise, we have the Young Catholic Repro Collective for folks 18-26, which is space for building power around pro-choice Catholicism, but also is open to our non-Catholic co-conspirators because the overreach of the Catholic church impacts everyone.

Maddy Niziolek (she/they) is a youth organizer, abortion doula, and EC access organizer. They are currently the Organizing and Engagement Specialist at Catholics for Choice, as well as a leadership committee member with DC Doulas for Choice, and co-founder and organizer with EC 4 DC. Previously, they were also a student organizer with GW RAGE where they organized for medication abortion on campus, worked to improve access to emergency contraception and other sexual health supplies, and helped found the student abortion doula collective.